New Witcher 3 patch hinders PS4 and Xbox One frame rate

Digital Foundry’s technical breakdown of the feature rich patch for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has revealed a negative impact on the frame rate for both the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game, most prominently in intensive areas like Crookback Bog, where the PS4 locks at 20fps.

“Essentially, gameplay on Xbox One now appears to rely on a similar double-buffer v-sync set-up to the PS4 game, locking its frame-rate to 20fps during these lulls in performance,” detail Digital Foundry. “This means that the reading on our graph is consistently lower on patch 1.07 as compared to 1.05, where it was free to waver between 20-30fps freely. On a matching route through the bog, frame-rate can be up to 8fps slower on the latest version of the game.”

“On top of that, even traveling through simple countryside roads (or Novigrad’s central city) continues to produce single-frame stutters every few seconds–a rough point we had hoped would be ironed out by now,” elaborate Digital Foundry . “Overall, little has improved in PS4’s bid for a smooth 30fps reading here, and in fact, the tail-end of our Novigrad test shows dips to 25fps as we hit the marketplace–something not seen on the last patch.”

Digital Foundry claim the patch has narrowed the gap between Xbox One and PS4, with Xbox One excelling and Sony’s console struggling, especially during cutscenes.

The PC version of the game seems unaffected by the update, though some players who purchased the game via CDProjektRed’s own GOG.com, as well as Steam, report that achievements are not working as they should. The patch is also failing to appear in some European countries but thankfully the games developer are on the case to resolve these issues.

Despite the few technical problems yielded by patch 1.07, the update provides a multitude of improvements and fixes including a new movement system for Geralt, optimized horse behaviour and a redesigned inventory system as well as plenty of bug fixes.